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Post by Farrar on Nov 11, 2018 15:27:29 GMT -5
My elementary school library had some paperback collections of 'Peanuts' and other comics, but, for some weird reason, our teachers wouldn't let us check them out(they were labeled by subject as 'comic books'). Maybe the 5th and 6th graders were 'mature' enough for them. I don't remember comics ever in my elementary school library (though it did have subscriptions to 16 Magazine for the girls and Hockey News for the boys which some kids fought over/ripped pin-ups from) but I do remember poring over a paperback of 'All In Color For A Dime' in the junior high school library! ![](https://farm3.staticflickr.com/2032/2556338278_6baf40e13c_z.jpg) i've heard about that book for years, but never actually seen it. By contrast, the only thing comic-related in my junior-high library was some of those old 'Popeye Explores Careers' comics, that were shunted off to some part of the library that was only for kids in a certain class that I didn't take. Excellent book, which was a collection of articles from a fanzine (can't remember which one)... The fanzine was Xero. There's some great info about Xero in Alter Ego #18, some of which can be seen at the TwoMorrows site. Here's the link to AE #18; the Xero stuff starts about midway through the preview (but of course all the AE pages are worth reading!) twomorrows.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=98_55&products_id=489And fwiw here is a pic of my own copy of All in Color for a Dime. IIRC I picked this up at a school book fair, probably a year or so after the book's publication in 1970. I was soooo excited to find a book about comics...but when I read the book I was very disappointed as there were maybe 2 pages regarding the comics I was reading at the time--FF, Avengers, the Legion, etc. Back then I didn't know or care about all that Golden Age stuff; it was too old. I wanted to read about modern comics. Well, now of course it's one of my favorite books. Glad I never threw this out! ![](https://i.imgur.com/ai2V5Qf.png)
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Post by beccabear67 on Nov 11, 2018 17:23:12 GMT -5
The fanzine was Xero. There's some great info about Xero in Alter Ego #18, some of which can be seen at the TwoMorrows site. Here's the link to AE #18; the Xero stuff starts about midway through the preview (but of course all the AE pages are worth reading!) twomorrows.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=98_55&products_id=489And fwiw here is a pic of my own copy of All in Color for a Dime. IIRC I picked this up at a school book fair, probably a year or so after the book's publication in 1970. I was soooo excited to find a book about comics...but when I read the book I was very disappointed as there were maybe 2 pages regarding the comics I was reading at the time--FF, Avengers, the Legion, etc. Back then I didn't know or care about all that Golden Age stuff; it was too old. I wanted to read about modern comics. Well, now of course it's one of my favorite books. Glad I never threw this out! ![](https://i.imgur.com/ai2V5Qf.png) Thanks for the link to the Alter Ego/FCC, enjoyed the pages about Xero! I think I saw the 1960 costume photo somewhere before. I think Trina was at that con dressed as something more from the pulps. I had some early books on comic strips, one was hardcover and published in the late '60s, and one in softcover by Jerry Robinson, and there was another one on comics including undergrounds titled 'Comix' which reprinted an entire Bill Everett Sub-Mariner, and I think Joe Shuster Superman too! There was also a hardcover book in the late '70s/early '80s at our regular library in town about Canadian comic books (like Bell Comics and Nelvana) of the '40s and maybe late '30s... and I haven't seen that again since. That would be the second ever history of comics book I read. I used to have a British book that had a lot of photos of early British and Australian editions of U.S. comics alongside their domestic product, but that was published much later in the late '80s I think. Almost forgot Maurice Horn's Encylopedia which had examples from around the world past and present published in the mid '70s. I got really interested in Dutch (Nederland) cartoonist Marten Toonder from that! Ja, ik graag de Tom Poes! My uncle over there even sent me a couple of the Tom Poes (and Ollie B. Bommel) boeks, and some Suske En Wiske which I liked a bit less but was still interesting.
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Post by comicsandwho on Nov 11, 2018 19:45:02 GMT -5
Maurice Horn's 'Encyclopedia...at least, portions of it, I never made it through the whole thing in any library loan priods... helped me write a couple of book reports in elementary school. Another good one I still have is the British comics historian Denis Gifford's 'International Book of Comics', which was basically him taking picturs of a fraction of the thousands of magazines in his collection, and classifying everything by genre.
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Post by codystarbuck on Nov 11, 2018 23:09:12 GMT -5
![](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61ViAmuU4aL._SX258_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg) This was one that Jerry Robinson did. This was the cover I had, from a different edition (I think) ![](http://goldenagecomics.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/The_Comics_back_2.jpg) I later had another of Ron Goulart's, plus the Encyclopedia he put out (mainly of Golden Age and major Silver Age characters) ![](http://www.thecomicbooks.com/img/50years.gif) ![](http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-cQsrIs1HiIQ/UdeM7604oUI/AAAAAAAAChY/VoB4OTDrVFQ/s1600/13.JPG) I had the original edition of Maurice Horn's World Encyclopedia of Comics and his Sex in the Comics. ![](https://tse1.mm.bing.net/th?id=OIP.qIvpa_7yp3J3ELHrMjvAnwAAAA&pid=15.1&P=0&w=300&h=300) ![](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/61rW2y3iJlL._SX218_BO1,204,203,200_QL40_.jpg) He also edited a History of Comic Strips. ![](https://img0.etsystatic.com/057/1/9585219/il_570xN.686138200_kfm7.jpg) I had most of the Mike Benton history books... ![](https://pictures.abebooks.com/isbn/9780878338351-us-300.jpg) ![](https://d3525k1ryd2155.cloudfront.net/h/307/828/302828307.0.m.1.jpg) ![](http://d1466nnw0ex81e.cloudfront.net/n_iv/600/967781.jpg) ![](https://pictures.abebooks.com/isbn/9780878338146-us-300.jpg) ![](http://d1466nnw0ex81e.cloudfront.net/n_iv/600/1131163.jpg) ![](http://www.thecomicbooks.com/img/HistoryHorrorComicsBenton.jpg) All of Jeff Rovin's Encyclopedias.... ![](https://tse2.mm.bing.net/th?id=OIP.uMw5RFSqw9eiCoyVcWFGQgHaJd&pid=15.1&P=0&w=300&h=300) ![](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51pA8H46meL._SL500_SX258_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg) ![](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51GZG736BAL._SX218_BO1,204,203,200_QL40_.jpg) ![](https://tse2.mm.bing.net/th?id=OIP.OLCS1bjVytA2bFPOEB8DeAHaJR&pid=15.1&P=0&w=300&h=300) ![](http://d1466nnw0ex81e.cloudfront.net/n_iv/600/1028513.jpg) ![](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51kE59-5e-L._SL300_.jpg) I picked up the revised edition of Jacobs and Jones The Comic Book Heroes, which switched from fan history of the comics and characters to gossipy, behind-the-scenes, mixed with the earlier material. That was where I first read the story of John Byrne's party where they burned Shooter, in effigy. ![](https://images.betterworldbooks.com/076/The-Comic-Book-Heroes-Jones-Gerard-9780761503934.jpg) I also had Jones' Men of Tomorrow ![](http://ww4.hdnux.com/photos/10/17/13/2159307/5/920x920.jpg) I have a scan of the Great Canadian Comic Books.... ![](https://pxhst.co/avaxhome/60/e8/0016e860.jpeg) I used to have one about british heroes, from Denis Gifford, the British cartoonist and comic historian. I also had Harvey Kurtzman's From Aargh to Zap, which had some great info on European stuff, but was massively cut short by his health problems... ![](http://stuartngbooks.com/images/detailed/7/kurtzman_from_Aargh!_to_Zap!_cv.jpg) And I had Mike Richardson's Between the Panels.... ![](https://d3525k1ryd2155.cloudfront.net/h/602/795/943795602.0.x.jpg) That one is a great one for fandom stories, behind the scenes stuff, oddities of comic history, and stories of comic finds. That is where I saw things like Gil Kane just trashing Julie Schwartz, from quoted excerpts (I think from The Comics Journal). Lot of fun stuff there, like the Mike Grell gun story and the truth of it (Grell was at a meeting at First Comics and showed off a .45 automatic pistol he had been given at Christmas, by a relative). Good stuff about Fawcett vs DC, other lawsuits and court cases, personalities; you name it. Used to have a real good library of comic history, until I donated a bunch of it to a library, when I was moving (I had memorized most of it, by then). As you can see, when I get interested on a subject, I tend to go deep. I had a bunch of books about Modern/Mid-Century Modern Architecture and Art Deco, military history and reference books (I had a whole slew of the Osprey Men At Arms series), books on The Prisoner, Man From UNCLE, Spy Fi, The Wild Wild West, Planet of the Apes, sci-fi movies, pulp illustration, book illustrators, etc, etc. 20 years of bookselling helped fuel that (thank you 30% discount!)
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Post by beccabear67 on Nov 12, 2018 0:41:21 GMT -5
Oh yeah, I guess that's the Canadian comics book... been a long time since I've seen that! I have a hard cover of the Couperie & Horn 'A History Of the Comic Strip', also Comix in hardcover minus dust jacket, and the Jerry Robinson 'The Comics' that looks slightly like a newspaper's first page. I think I got a large softcover collection of Krazy Kat, mostly in b&w, at the same time. Now there are so many non-fiction books about comics, but up to the '80s it was a fairly small shelf. I bought the first edition of Frederick Schodt's Manga book in hardcover, Yronwode & Robbins' 'Women And The Comics' from Trina, and an Eisner 'Sequential Narrative Whatever' collection of stuff from the Kitchen Sink Spirit magazines display copy from Ms. yronwode. I probably should've gotten the Harvey Kurtzman, I think the public library had a copy and so I got to at least read it and Scott McCloud's 'Understanding Comics'. Various Price Guides from 1978 onward also had some great long articles.
Some of the things I never have had though are those Steranko tabloid sized histories, but I had some semi-pro and Cartoonnews publications on Toth, George Evans, the E.C.s in general, and a SOTI by Wertham (sans dust jacket and bibliography page).
I'm even worse with music history though, you wouldn't believe how many non-fiction books and magazines I have accumulated. That all started with some huge book on The Beatles circa 1979-80 which disclosed the story of Stu Sutcliffe!
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Post by Deleted on Nov 12, 2018 0:55:49 GMT -5
There's a thread floating around here somewhere form a few years back about books about comics, and a lot of these books being posted were discussed in some depth in it if I recall correctly. It's been a while though, so no harm is talking about them again, but some people may have already said their piece about them in the other thread.
-M
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Post by codystarbuck on Nov 12, 2018 0:56:27 GMT -5
Oh yeah, I guess that's the Canadian comics book... been a long time since I've seen that! I have a hard cover of the Couperie & Horn 'A History Of the Comic Strip', also Comix in hardcover minus dust jacket, and the Jerry Robinson 'The Comics' that looks slightly like a newspaper's first page. I think I got a large softcover collection of Krazy Kat, mostly in b&w, at the same time. Now there are so many non-fiction books about comics, but up to the '80s it was a fairly small shelf. I bought the first edition of Frederick Schodt's Manga book in hardcover, Yronwode & Robbins' 'Women And The Comics' from Trina, and an Eisner 'Sequential Narrative Whatever' collection of stuff from the Kitchen Sink Spirit magazines display copy from Ms. yronwode. I probably should've gotten the Harvey Kurtzman, I think the public library had a copy and so I got to at least read it and Scott McCloud's 'Understanding Comics'. Various Price Guides from 1978 onward also had some great long articles. Some of the things I never have had though are those Steranko tabloid sized histories, but I had some semi-pro and Cartoonnews publications on Toth, George Evans, the E.C.s in general, and a SOTI by Wertham (sans dust jacket and bibliography page). I'm even worse with music history though, you wouldn't believe how many non-fiction books and magazines I have accumulated. That all started with some huge book on The Beatles circa 1979-80 which disclosed the story of Stu Sutcliffe! I had the two Steranko books; but let them go (like an idiot!). Some really good stuff in there, like his Blackhawk article. I really wish he'd reprint that (or get someone else to do so..). My local had both of them, just sitting there (probably later printings) and I snapped them up. I also had the Fleischer DC books and the updated World Encyclopedia of Comic, I originally had the single volume (which weighed a ton); but later got hold of the multi-volume library edition. There was some dodgy history in the original edition but the revised had several modern American comics where you could tell Horn had never read the material, because he had the plot and themes all wrong. The one thing I never understood, in the Horn book, was his Druillet entry (which he wrote; the original had multiple contributors, including Jerry Bails). It pretty much states that Druillet is over-rated, without ever justifying the statement. Nowhere else did I come across anything that negative, particularly about a creator (even the really scummy ones). It read like there was some personal grudge between them, or something. Roy Thomas criticized some of it, originally (some of the Marvel entries); but, that was the one entry (and I read most of them, over time) that really stood out as harsh criticism or personally motivated. Makes you wonder if Druillet stole his girl, or something.
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Post by jason on Nov 13, 2018 0:10:30 GMT -5
Love Rovin's Encyclopedia of Superheroes. I used to wonder why there were no scans of Marvel or DC comics covers, instead mainly focusing on early 80s indies, Lesser Golden/Silver age comics, and of course, Atlas. Still, that approach was kind of better as it allowed for coverage of lesser-known characters (a modern day version, by contrast, would just be full of iconic and modern characters with no room for the obscure). The index of foreign superheroes may have the first mention of Gundam in the US.
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Post by codystarbuck on Nov 13, 2018 13:24:08 GMT -5
Love Rovin's Encyclopedia of Superheroes. I used to wonder why there were no scans of Marvel or DC comics covers, instead mainly focusing on early 80s indies, Lesser Golden/Silver age comics, and of course, Atlas. Still, that approach was kind of better as it allowed for coverage of lesser-known characters (a modern day version, by contrast, would just be full of iconic and modern characters with no room for the obscure). The index of foreign superheroes may have the first mention of Gundam in the US. Lot cheaper to stick with small indies and stuff in the public domain. Facts on File wasn't a big publishing house. When I first bought it, I was surprised by the amount of coverage on Atlas/Seaboard characters, given its short life (I had only read the last Phoenix and a Destructor), until I picked up more books from the line and saw Rovin's name and then later read an interview with him about Atlas. Then I got it. He thought far more highly of much of it than the bulk of fandom. Some of his entries were questionable, though. In the team section, he had an entry for the Justice Machine (which was published by Noble, at that point) and was really dismissive. When I later got those early issues, it was rough in spots; but, nowhere near as bad as he made it out to be. The Adventure Heroes book turned out to be a favorite, as it covered pretty wide territory, from paperback book characters (Travis McGee, The Executioner, The Destroyer), to comic strip adventurers, to movie characters, to tv detectives. All kinds of interesting entries there, which led me to some great stuff. The Aliens, Robots and Spaceships had an entry for the God Phoenix, from Gatchaman/Battle of the Planets, which was the first acknowledgement of that series I saw in a US publication, outside of Starlog (and that was about 10 years before). The G-Force team got a full entry in the Adventure Heroes book.
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Post by Phil Maurice on Nov 13, 2018 20:50:21 GMT -5
I know it was part and parcel of US postal history and publishers probably didn't care...but I still can't get over the fact that comic book subscriptions were sent folded in half.
I have a couple of books with subscription creases, FF 66 for example (which has a nice Kirby "split" cover). It's kind of a cool historical feature, despite being a defect. One of the selling points the publishers stressed in the 70s while hawking subscriptions was that all titles were "MAILED FLAT."
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Post by Cei-U! on Nov 13, 2018 21:54:12 GMT -5
One of the selling points the publishers stressed in the 70s while hawking subscriptions was that all titles were "MAILED FLAT." It was right when Marvel started announcing that their books were mailed flat that I began subscribing... and our mailman folded them in half to fit 'em in our box anyway!
Cei-U! I summon the best laid plans!
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Post by Deleted on Nov 13, 2018 21:56:41 GMT -5
I know it was part and parcel of US postal history and publishers probably didn't care...but I still can't get over the fact that comic book subscriptions were sent folded in half.
I would have cancelled immediately.
Just imagine your new Diamond distributed comics being folded in half before you collect them.
*shudder*
There, I said it.
I only had mail subscriptions for 4 years (age 12-16) when I was living in a small town that did not have a place where I could buy comics regularly. I really didn't care about the crease since I just wanted to read them. Most of the ones on the news stands back then were bent from being in spinner racks for awhile. The only way to buy near mint comics before LCS was to be there when they were delivered to the news stand and offer to help put them on the racks.
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Post by Reptisaurus! on Nov 13, 2018 23:32:05 GMT -5
One of the selling points the publishers stressed in the 70s while hawking subscriptions was that all titles were "MAILED FLAT." It was right when Marvel started announcing that their books were mailed flat that I began subscribing... and our mailman folded them in half to fit 'em in our box anyway!
Cei-U! I summon the best laid plans!
HA!
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Post by Icctrombone on Nov 14, 2018 7:03:17 GMT -5
One of my earliest memories of collecting comics is when a grade school teacher , who read comics , subscribed a set of Dc comics for me to be delivered to my home. I think they were delivered flat. It think it was JLA, World's Finest and Batman. ![](http://i.imgur.com/e54lbTU.jpg) ![](http://i.imgur.com/tNiQ4lU.jpg) these covers spring to my memory as some of the books that I received. ![](http://i.imgur.com/c8Lybv3.jpg) ![](http://i.imgur.com/9FtGCpu.jpg) ![](http://i.imgur.com/NhXW3h0.jpg) The cool thing was that she bought the sub and then the cover price jumped to 25 cents. Thank you Ms. Leonard.
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Post by MDG on Nov 14, 2018 9:47:19 GMT -5
I know it was part and parcel of US postal history and publishers probably didn't care...but I still can't get over the fact that comic book subscriptions were sent folded in half. And readers would fold the covers back when they read them! And roll them up and put them in their back pocket! And leave them on the front porch! And throw them under the bed! And cut out coupons and value stamps! And pull out the centerfold to and use it to protect the table when they painted models (true story)! And cut out covers and pin-ups to put on their walls! And read them over and over and over 'til they fell apart! And never put them in a bag!
Obviously, these people hated comics.
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